Auschwitz Death Camp

Auschwitz by the Numbers

The German concentration camp and later death camp of Auschwitz was
established on May 20, 1940 in Upper Silesia at a Polish army barracks
site taken over during the German occupation.

Photos taken by Dr. Stephen Feinstein on November 1, 1992. November 1, "All Saints Day" in the Christian Calendar is a special time for remembrance of the Polish political victims of Nazism. Thus, on this day, thousands of visitors came to Auschwitz I, while virtually no visitors were in Birkenau (Auschwitz II). At the time of these photos,all numbers of victims had been removed from the monument in Birkenau. This was because the Auschwitz State Museum had determined that the figure of 4 million victims at Auschwitz was inaccurate and had been used by th Polish Communist regime since the late 1940s as a way to demonize "Fascism" and to enhance the legitimacy of the Communist regime.

After the fall of Communism, commissions determined the death toll at the three main Auschwitz camps (Oswiecim, Birkenau and Monowitz-Buna) to be between 1.25 million and 1.5 million people, which included mainly Jews at Birkenau but also Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet POWS, political prisoners from other countries, priests and others.

The change in numbers killed on the memorial does not affect the overall number of Jewish victims which varies from 5.2 million as a low figure to over six million. At his trial in Warsaw in 1946, Rudolph Hoess (Höss),Commandant of the camp, said that the number killed was "only two million." The sentence for his being a war criminal was death by hanging, and was carried out in Auschwitz, Camp I.

Auschwitz has been the scene of many controversial issues because of
conflicted memory in Poland about victimization and also because of the
absence of Jews. Jews were 10% of the 1939 Polish population and now
number less than 20,000.

Holocaust deniers have been quick to use the revised Polish figures on Auschwitz as a means of diminishing the number of victims or claiming falsification. This is an incorrect analysis as numbers based on pre-war population records and German records themselves from killing units in the field (such as Einsatgruppen in USSR) attest to figures of Jewish victimization around 6 million.

For a view of the Auschwitz-Birkenau monument, information on the competition to build it, and Sybil Milton's comment about the numbers on the plaques, see Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial.

Regarding Overall Statistics of Jewish Victimization

Below are Jewish population maps from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The numbers certainly speak for themselves in terms of the devistating loss of Jewish life.